back then he would
tell me that he was
born with a specific
purpose, made for
one reason, with a
smile, with a water
color painting,

*just to love you,
brooke.

out in the
pasture I
keep my
wool and
graze in
the tall
grass
discontent
with the paths
that make no
sense, please,
find

me.

on

old oaken tables I'll love
you in dark roast coffee
and steamed milk with
honey, against quilted
beds early morning in
the loft, when the sheets
are loud and the floorboards
aren't awake, when the windows
are dewy, we won't speak about
our mistakes.

she likes older men
because Ty said boys
like *****, and he tells
me that librarians are
**** when I say I have
a full bookcase at
home, when he
says he doesn't
read, when he
ditches me on
July 4th to
get drunk
prays before
his meals but
says that he
would ****
my friends
if I broke
his heart.

we are the outliers
the ones with plain
souls, the girls they
loved before they
were found, we
are the hearts
before the
discovery
we are
not
the


discovered.

watch you find a girl
that's better at drawing
that loves to hike and
lets her leg hair grow
she's patterned all up
and down and listens
to the Doors, plays with
your record player while
the evening stripes in on
her legs the shape of the
blinds, probably smells
like patchouli or maybe
honeysuckle and her
hair makes you forget
about the fact that I
exist, makes you
forget about
they way
I was
there

sometimes describing
your face absolves me
of all the things I did
wrong, people see it
on my lips, *ask me,
ask me about Chris

Make a wish on your necklace clasp
he's thinking about you when you
sneeze I wonder if you see hallmark
cards and think of me, if you read
Monte Cristo and wish I was
Haydée, if you grow flushed
during that chapter of The
Great Gatsby where your
voice broke twice and  
you let your head fall
back, I miss the ways
I could make you
do that.

I wanted to
make this
longer but
there is no
pretty way
to ask if
you have
fallen in
love with
someone
else
yet.

if my thoughts were little girls


there would be one in particular
who knocks on doors and she tells
me that somewhere somewhere out
there (towards the north or south or
east) he is looking for you even
if he doesn't know it  and

if my thoughts were little girls

I have stopped opening my doors.

I am done
playing with
clay, with mud,
making pots
and men.

I should tell him all
about how I am 75%
of everything he does
not want, but I need
to believe that I am
made with sea foam
with pollen for blood
with coriander seeds
and pomegranates
that to someone
else I could be
all of these
things.

i am scared
he will blow
straight through
me, and i am a
fresh cut in the
wind, an open
blister under
water, I have
not felt this
vulnerable
in a while

back when I still touched you
your ankles were always caked
with dirt, you told me that
no matter how much you scrub,
you're not gonna get it off and
you'd watch me intensely as I
took your heels in my lap and
washed your feet over and over

let's be honest
sometimes I turn
towards the wall at
night and close my
eyes, I can see your
hairline, a fracture
of scoliosis in your
curved spine, I can
almost trace
the bumps of
your vertebrae
through that
thin cotton
sweater

let's be honest

you start to turn over
before I lose you in the
geometric dark, sometimes
our eyes play tricks on us and
we see colors, well, sometimes
mine play jokes and I see you.

in this dream I stood at
the gated entrance to the
way we used to be,  a
green trellis shaped like
a star and the old house
where we were so often
was boarded up. I wanted
to call and ask you to lunch
but we had just been on the
biggest journey and it occurred
to me that you needed to rest
so I stood at that entrance until
the dream
ended

no, around him I want
to feel like a peony, like
i'm sinking my fingers into
barrels of sesame seeds, like
i'm doing everything right
when I fail a test, there is
nothing about him that
i need to fix, that in the
night i can fill up the
bed and in the morning
he'll still be there.

I want to feel like I'm doing something right.
I want to feel like I'm doing something right.

i am afraid of my own
of myself, of the things
my dad dreams, of no
answers, of asking
questions to my
pillow at 2 am
out loud and
my voice
sounds
so soft
and mistaken
like it really shouldn't
be there.

i wove a flower crown
for you; how could i
forget? i want to tell
everyone how much
i love them for all
the things i cannot
say to you, i'm
still trying to
write you
down.

left you at the station
wrung out and dried
on a train to I-don't-
know-where, but I
bought the ticket
and I was ready
to lose you, I am
ready to lose you
I left you at the
station.

this charcoal is a part of me
and I believe i can erase my
mistakes with a chunk of
rubber, i can gesture draw
and not worry about the
lines, because all the lines
are me and i am all the lines

that kid phil wouldn't shut up about **** and
acid, downing a can of pabst blue ribbon, the logs
snapped and I let the moths drown him out, because
the stars are so much louder (my silence is so much
louder than it used to be) have you ever wondered
why moths are such idiots? he asks. I tell him they're
just looking for the moon and everyone goes quiet
because, what? They wanted to believe that moths
aren't just searching for the light too?

they were all crossfaded
and brendan probably
doesn't remember telling
me that everything was
*so beautiful and you look
like pocahontas

those aren't dreams, those are goals*
I stopped using that puny voice
and hiding behind the avocados
in my cobb salad. and who are
you to to define the space between
my fingers, the gaps between my
teeth? Dear Wyatt, feel honored
because for a moment you breathed
my dreams.

my hair always caught
on the beaded wooden
seat cover on the passenger
side, knees up, feet on the
dashboard, modest mouse
telling me to Float On,
back from the beach
                          back from home                  (both)
back from half price
from mcdonalds,
from fred meyer
                                92nd street park             (in the end)
will you go back
and look at what
i etched on the bench?
it was a doodle, but
it meant I  l o v e  y o u

on the trip back home
we stood in front of the
air pump at the gas station
in awe of all it's simple metal
and the fact that we had no idea
how to use it, but a man came along
in ***** slacks and a beaten bike, asked
if we needed help and I noticed how his teeth
appeared to be solidified together like one giant
tooth on each row. And I wouldn't have thought
about the ***** man with two giant teeth ever
again if my mom hadn't have pointed out
that he might have been god. and maybe
so, maybe not. Maybe he was just the
***** man on the bike but what if
he was god and what if I had
missed the monumental
moment to ask him all
of my questions, lay
all of my fears out
on the coffee stained
pavement. But we
hadn't and we had
left, drove 13 hours
to St. George, Utah
without a second
thought.

i want to tell him
something about
how he was a monumental
loss, but I'm too afraid of the
ways in which he moves, afraid
of the ways he blinks and talks
of all the truths that are no longer
i could be moving forward but I'm
stuck on him, and bits of dream
cling to the walls of my consciousness
I'd say this is a matter of letting go,
but this is a matter of cutting ties
but which ties, which cords, which
wires, red or blue? Red or Blue?
red or blue?

i could describe
the sensation as
wringing, but in
truth, the motion
is more like milking.
Sometimes in the morning
there are hands in my chest
and instead of milking, they
wring to the tune of old peony
lotion and your face in disassembled
machine parts, brief instances that belong
nowhere (but existed once) and maybe I
fabricate you but the hands keep reaching
and wringing, cording me through the loops
in their fingers, unforgiving in their job.

i notice that I sign
every diary entry
and hold my legs
in bed, like every
page is a letter
and every leg
is a hand.

I  s t i l l  b l a m e  m y s e l f.
a n d  w e  c o u l d  a r g u e
t h e  d y n a m i c s  o f  h a t e
a n d  w h a t  c o n s t i t u t e s
a s  h a t i n g  b u t  w h y
b o t h e r  w h e n  y o u
w i l l  never  s a y  m y
n a m e  w i t h  a
p o s i t i v e
c o n n o t a t i o n.

you have always been
fringed in gold, always
back lit, probably born
with a silver lining, never
having been a cloud but
you effortlessly drifted
into my life, and out
and out, and out
and
out

but i am just kid
trying to be too old
for someone to whom
I am just skin, a mouth
on two legs, he cracks
***** jokes and I
realize I don't
have to like
them

it took everything

to not call you in Albuquerque, let
you know I'm here, just know I was
there just know I was driving the roads
breathing the same air, that this was the
closest we'd been since april of last year, that
you could see me, that you could see me but
I was too afraid of you not wanting to see me
too afraid of the commas you wouldn't use
the perpetual boredom sounding through
your replies, the I don't want anything to
do with you and I told brett that you
were probably one of those people
who never speaks to an ex once
you're done and I was both
surprised and hurt by my
lack of knowledge by the
sheer amount of things
that i didn't know
about you but
you never ask
these things
because they
never
matter



not until later.

california has a spirit
that makes you want
to sleep with motorcyclists
whose arms are rich browns
the air smells like warm lime
and the palms look like kisses
I could be giving. It's all very cliche,
but california has a spirit and it makes
you want to  sleep with motorcyclists
whose arms
are rich browns
with salt n' pepper hair
they would probably
know how to love you
maybe.

it rained on the drive
home and brett fell
asleep early on beneath
the hum of sigur ros
and I realized my
thighs were warm
and I was living and
breathing and you
should want me
you should want
me because I am
warm and living and
breathing.

how easily I fell onto
that bench outside, a
simple lets just wait
a few minutes that
turned into 30, she
fish tailed my hair
and we laughed
but inside I could
hear your voice
seven years, a
few states, a
few girls,
I feel like
such a
child
for
falling
for



you.

I feel like
a lady bug
in a bull's
stead, yes
that's the
way you
make me
feel.

that omnipresent camera settles on
my hand, glowing in the dim light
the deep brown shadows shift in the
moving car, polygon animals that creep
back and forth in steady patterns, and
you pan up my arm, don't meet my face
shift to my legs, a soft lavender in the evening
and off in the distance thunderheads sleepily
roll across the hills and slivers of light
jet out across little cabins like little jewels
embedded in the pastures, out my window
you focus in on my moving lips, some song
on the radio you'll never remember, just the
chorus you'll never place, but my lips moving
in the fading sunlight, but my lips moving in
the fading sunlight, but my lips moving in the
fading
sunlight.

i tried to fit into
that kettle corn
bag he held in
his hand, to no
avail, if he liked
pork buns I would
be a fruit ****.

took a sip of
Pabst Blue Ribbon on the river,
kept time with his strokes and
stared at his neck an hour down
the Arkansas, even through the
rapids where his shoulder blades
kept me in check, where his goosebumps
rose and fell in the hail

Coaster
Wallflower
table doily


me.

i had this dream
where he called and said
he didn't know if he was
mad or why he was mad
but he laughed and asked
how I was and the clouds
were hot air balloons and
birds tossed red ropes from
the  sky so that we could fly
with them. So I knew---that
even if this were a dream, it
was all fictional. Not because
birds couldn't toss ropes from
the sky but because I know
you'd never call me.

i sent you a text saying that we should take a break before you moved to new mexico the first time because I didn't know how to truly let you go (I still don't) and I didn't want to lose you completely because while I felt I was falling out of love, you were still my best friend, a rock, a safe place.  And I'm sorry it took so long to admit, that yes, i was falling out of love, but only the love we built around our youth, a haven for seventeen year olds that had roofs but wanted their own made of leaves and blankets, cologne and sweat. Yes, I fell out of love with adolescence but I still

love

you.

how could I
have lost myself
when you were
the one covering
everything up?

kids by mgmt on your
summer playlist, I remind
you of two (three?) summers ago, a
season with no year because
it's lost in the chaos of me trying
to hide your hickeys from kaitlin
all the so-called oldies, back when
we first had cars, had no jobs and
listlessly sweated the lyrics to all
the pretty girls by fun.

in dreams people end up in
places, shrink down to sizes
aren't faces but bodies, aren't
lips, just statues, no legs, thick
torsos, you settle for old faces
call them out from behind doorways
make love to them in hallways
but they disintegrate beneath
your hands and you spend
the time waking up trying
to fall back, the lights
go off in your dream and the
people there fall asleep, you
probably saw satan once
and said he didn't belong
there, your prayers weren't
audible but drowned out his
voice, you said no, you aren't
allowed to be there, this is sullied
ground, this is hallowed ground
this is

sacred ground

we are children riddled
with holes that we hasten
to fill, but it's okay to have
ditches, to have pits, caverns
pinholes, dots.

in the same way you
told me that no one
would ever love me
as much as you, no
one will ever tape
pink and red streamers
to your ceiling and wait
three hours for you to
come home






(not in the way I did, at least)